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2013--Another great year for CAST architecture

 

Thanks to our wonderful clients for another great year!  In the office, we have a solid mix of intriguing work--a remodel of University Cooperative School, Rainier Beach Urban Farm and Wetlands, the completion of Canal Street Studio, a little coffee shop, a host of prefab modular houses on Bainbridge Island, a live-work studio, in addition to some really fun houses and remodels such as The RancheroOliner Residence and the Saratoga Residence.

This next year we're looking forward to the completion of the Ho Residence on Lake Washington, a cabin in Roslyn, a house or two in Seattle, and more on Bainbridge.  We'll also have a sweet townhouse project, a couple second story additions.

Happy New Year to all!

Matt, Stefan, Tim, Rebecca and Forrest


THANKS TO ALL THE VOLUNTEERS AT THE SPE EARTH DAY EVENT!
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We had a fantastic turn out for the Sand Point ElementaryEarth-day work party this past weekend. A special thanks to Loren Yaguchi and all the folks from Abbott Construction's special projects group for donating materials, shop time, and a whole lot of can do to make the benches we designed become a fantastic kit of parts for the community to assemble!

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30 new stacking benches for the outdoor classroom fully assembled - a testament to the prep of the folks a Abbott Construction and all the volunteers who turned out to work on our local public school!

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Thank you to Carter Capps, pitcher for the Seattle Mariners and Taylor Graham, defender for the Sounders FC for signing autographs and helping with our projects!

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Richard Swann author of “Our School Garden” putting the newly assembled benches for the outdoor classroom to good use!

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Rainier Beach Urban Farm

In collaboration with Seattle Tilth, the Friends of R.B.U.F.W., and the Berger Partnership, CAST will be designing an urban farm in Seattle.  The site is a former municipal nursery in Rainier Beach--10 acres of mostly wetland with some hoop houses at the north end.  We'll be undertaking the challenge to not only make a model for urban agriculture, we'll also be greatly increasing the ecological function of the wetlands.

This project is in one of the most diverse zip codes in the nation, and we'll be involving the community to shape the design, as well as creating facilities for small scale commercial farmers, entrepreneurs, and other programs such as Seattle Youth Garden Works.  The hope is to make a community hub centered on growing and sharing food.

The first community design meeting is June 19th on site (time TBD).  Please come and share your vision with us!

Chicken Coop for the Institute for Women's Excellence, Rwamagana, Rwanda.

We helped out a great organization, Orphans to Ambassadors with a pro bono design and donation for a chicken coop to help feed 423 orphans at the Institute for Women's Excellence in Rwanda.  During the month of May, they build the coop, some rocket stoves, and some rainwater harvesting projects for this and other orphanages in the area.  Great work!

Hopefully, we'll have the chance to help out with more their future projects!

Please support them with a donation!

Urban Intervention at the Seattle Center-- a vision for the next fifty years

In collaboration with the Berger Partnership ,Via Architecture, and Rushing, we put together a competition proposal for the replacement of Memorial Stadium and a new vision for the Center as a whole.

The design is an organic and topographic intervention that flows through the Center and surrounding neighborhoods, creating new connections, opportunities for new programs, and experiences at the Center. It creates a dense, flexible fabric stitched together with multi-modal transit to bring in new audiences, local/daily users, and new amenities for regional visitors.

Some of the important features:

Connectivity:

Right now the Center acts as an island in the city, but should be a hub linking neighborhoods rather than separating them. To that end, we're showing a linkage through the Bay to Lake trail, a transit center with bus, Rapid Ride, sub grade parking, and a new loop of the streetcar. The northern edge, bounded by Mercer will have a new lid park to bring in foot/bike traffic from Queen Anne and a plaza at the corner of Mercer and 5th. Broad Street becomes a greenway linking to SAM Sculpture Park to Lake Union. In effect, it's location makes it an ideal 'transit oriented park' to draw Seattleites to and through the Center.

Layered landscape:

The new topography defines the Center Green, an organic open space at the heart that spills out in all directions. Memorial Stadium is replaced by a field with a 'kop' style hill as seating, perfect for multi-use such as a musical performance space.  From 5th, the landscape opens up for a vista to the International Fountain. Underneath the Center Green, we have a series of public event spaces, storefronts for fringe/alternative cultural institutions to colocate and share resources, layers of parking, and finally a grid of ground source heat pumps to lessen energy use for the Center overall.

We didn't stop at the boundaries of the original 9 acre site, but extended the idea to carve out new access from Uptown and the meandering pathways that run through the Center Green terminate at a bridge to the apex of Key Arena--a great new public view point to downtown and the Sound.

Expressive Environmental Infrastructure:

Beyond Seattle 2030, the design begins to illustrate the path toward making the world's first Living Building District. The goal is to create a beneficial closed loop system for using on site resources and expressing the infrastructure so visitors can see, understand, and take the lessons of sustainability home. Floating above the landscape, there is a layer of solar canopy (about 150K SF) to generate energy for the spaces on the 9 acre site. We also did a first pass on other locations for solar throughout the Center, and could easily add twice that amount on existing roofs and walls of other center buildings. The draped landscape collects storm water and purifies it through a series of rain gardens and native landscape.

The Center as a cultural incubator:

We're also proposing a mix of new, smaller multi use spaces to support the growth of new cultural generators, like SIFF and KEXP.  Tucked under the knoll overlooking the performance/field, we are proposing a new multi-use performance/community space which can be configured like the Center's Northwest Rooms or opened up for larger events. At the corner of Mercer and 5th, we've opened up a new urban plaza that acts as both a local Queen Anne gateway and spill out space for the community space and cultural incubators.

Although we were not selected as a finalist for the competition, I think we put together a very forward looking, connective, and sustainable solution which would do the city proud.

Special thanks to Studio 216 for the help with the renderings!

Seattle Center Urban Intervention competition-sneak peak

Soon we'll be able to post our design concept for the revitalization of the Seattle Center, as part of the Urban Intervention competition, but here is a little sneak peak:

Once they announce the finalists, we'll be able to release the full content of our proposal, as well and give full credit to all the great collaborators we worked with.